Many fans had their fingers crossed that the UFC would officially announce the Russian fighter as the organization’s newest acquisition at today’s UFC 75 event.

However, the event, which was held at the O2 Arena in London (and airs via tape delay at 9 p.m ET/PT tonight), has concluded, and no official announcement was made during the four-and-a-half hour show. MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) readers on the scene at today’s event say there was a definite buzz about the possibility but that there was no hint the fighter had been inked to a deal.

In years’ past, the UFC has used live events to announce major fighter signings, and many fans could’t help but speculate that today’s show — the third the UFC has hosted in Europe this year — would be the prime time to make an announcement.

The UFC and Emelianenko’s camp have been in negotiations for months — ever since Zuffa LLC (the UFC’s parent company) purchased PRIDE earlier this year. Not all of the contracts were transfered to Zuffa, though, and many of the organization’s top fighters became free agents who could negotiate and sign with other organizations.

If signed, Emelianenko would bring an unparalleled resume to the UFC. With a near-perfect 26-1 record, he suffered his lone loss in a 2000 RINGS event against Tsuyoshi Kohsaka. The bout was stopped just 17 seconds in because of a cut caused by a glancing elbow from Kohsaka (Emelianenko later avenged the loss in a 2005 PRIDE Bushido event).

Since the loss, it’s been pure domination of some of the sport’s top fighters, including Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic, Mark Coleman, Mark Hunt and Matt Lindland

A total of 26 fighters got their chance to shine on Saturday as part of UFC 190 at Rio de Janeiro’s HSBC Arena. Now that UFC 190 is in the books, it’s time to commence MMAjunkie’s “Three Stars” ceremony.

The man known for cranking submissions to the point of injury added eye-gouging to his repertoire. But is the controversy of Rousimar Palhares too essential to his bizarre, awful appeal for his employers to take any meaningful action against him?